1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to computer network communications and, more particularly, to the collection of information on Web site traffic.
2. Description of the Related Art
When a computer network user begins a communication session over the Internet, the user can request data files from an Internet-connected computer called a file server or Web server using the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP). These data files comprise what are commonly referred to as Web pages or simply “pages”. The Web pages are typically written in one or more types of programming code called hypertext mark-up language (HTML), extensible style sheet language (XSL), or extensible markup language (XML), and can be viewed or displayed through a graphical user interface (GUI) program called a browser, such as “Communicator” from Netscape Communications Corporation of Santa Clara, Calif., USA, or “Internet Explorer” from Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash., USA. The network nodes and collection of such data files are commonly referred to as the “World Wide Web”. A collection of related files under a common Internet network domain location or node is commonly referred to as a Web site. The files that are available at a Web site can include a mixture of text, image, video, and audio data.
A network user can request a Web site page by clicking on a link in the browser window or by typing in a uniform resource locator (URL) network address in the browser location toolbar. When a user makes a page request, the user's browser sends a request message from the user's browser to the Web site server, providing the Web site server with the URL of the requested page. So-called Internet “cookies” and header information may also be sent along with such a request. The cookies may be used to store information about the requesting user and may be used to keep track of pages requested by the user from the Web site server.
Typically, cookies are stored on the client system or computer, thus, when that user returns to the same Web site or Web page, the browser sends a copy of that cookie back to the server. When a user's browser requests a Web page from a server at a given domain, the browser also provides any cookies it has that originated from that domain. If the user's browser has no cookie to provide, then the server can provide one with the Web page data, which the user's browser will store. Thereafter, when the user's browser again requests a page from the Web site, that browser will automatically provide the stored cookie to the server, along with the browser request for the Web page.
Information may also be passed to the Web site server via parameters contained as part of the Web page URL address. For example, the URL http://www.URLAddress.com/x.cgi?account_no=123is a URL containing the parameter “account_no”, with a value of 123, which is passed to the Web server as part of the URL request. The text string “account_no=123” is also sometimes referred to as a query string. Links or hyperlinks are elements in a Web page, such as one or more words, phrases, symbols, or images that enable a user to view another page by clicking on the link in the user's browser. Such a link may also be a link or hyperlink to enable the user to download a file for later viewing, rather than immediate viewing through the user's browser. Links that are images are often called banners. Links are generally coded with an anchor tag, which is an HTML data construct comprising a text string that specifies the URL address of the requested data file. For example,                <a href=“http://www.URLaddress.com/requestedpage. html”>. . . </a>, is an anchor tag in which the requested page is referred to as “requestedpage.html” and is found at the URL domain name address of “www.URLaddress.com”. Thus, the anchor tag specifies the domain name and page reference and thereby specifies the URL of the requested data file.        
The Internet has become an important advertising medium for advertisers. Placing advertisements on Web pages, shown as banners or links on a page, assists in promoting products and services. Similarly, content service providers, who provide Web pages over the Internet, may obtain revenue from sponsoring advertisers by embedding links to the advertiser's page, thereby referring users to the advertiser's page. The popularity of this type of advertising is evinced by the proliferation of advertising banners on the Internet.
One goal of sponsoring advertisers is to place their advertisements on popular Web sites so their advertisements may be seen more often, as well as to increase the possibility of their advertisements being clicked or selected through such links. Some advertisers also use links to enable download of free copies of their software for a trial period. Content service providers are interested in keeping track of how many times an advertisement has been displayed and/or clicked to determine the appropriate fees to charge to an advertiser, as well as to calculate fees based on the number of times an advertisement has been clicked or displayed. There may be additional reasons for Web site operators to measure traffic, or page requests, such as to determine popularity relative to other Web sites. In addition to tracking page requests, it also is useful to track the referring source of a page request, that is, requests from particular links on a page. Tracking individual link referrals provides greater fidelity of Web traffic information, as to which links are creating the most referrals and therefore creating the most interest. Thus, there is a widespread desire for tracking the navigation of the Web by selection of links on Web sites.
Measures of advertising effectiveness or popularity include the links clicked on a Web page, the referring links (or entrance links) for a page request, the click-thru percentage (the percentage of times a link is displayed versus clicked), location of referring links within a Web page or window, the most popular text link in a Web page or Web site, banners clicked in a Web page or Web site, the number of times a file is downloaded, the types of files downloaded, and the like (hereafter collectively referred to as link-tracking information or surfing events). Tools used in determining the effectiveness of an advertisement and tools used to monitor such information can be difficult and time consuming to implement, and the cost for embedding links on a Web page can be relatively high due to modifications necessary to Web page code.
Web server software applications, such as “Internet Information Server” by Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash., USA, or “Enterprise Server” by Netscape Communications Corporation of Santa Clara, Calif., USA, have the capability of recording Web surfing event information to log files. Such log files typically contain HTTP request date and time, the requested URL address (including query string, if applicable), network user's IP address, the referring Web page, HTTP version, and the like. The composition of information recorded or captured in a log file, however, is dependent on the Web server software. Several pieces of information related to link-tracking information, such as the most popular link in a Web page and the number of times a file is downloaded from a particular Web page, is not typically captured by the Web server software in its log file. This information would be useful in measuring Web traffic.
From the discussion above, it is apparent that there is a need for a link-tracking system that captures information related to links, that is easy to implement, and would involve very minimal changes or additions to existing or new Web sites. The present invention fulfills this need.